Hyakkimaru's Birth
Book 1 of the Dororo Novel Series
Toriumi Jinzō
Part 5 - The Ōnin War Begins
Dororo agreed to guide Hyakkimaru to a place close to the magistrate's office the next morning, but getting there was easier said than done. Everywhere they looked, there were burning and damaged buildings and fortifications. Corpses lay so thick on the ground that they were piled up on top of one another. So many buildings had burned that Hosokawa Katsumoto had moved the Emperor from his palace into Shōkoku Temple with the shōgun. The temple was surrounded by patrolling guards at all times. Shōkoku Temple had been built by shōgun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu in 1383. The entire temple complex had been destroyed by fire in 1394, but reconstruction had followed soon after. It occupied a defensible position in Kyōto, just north of the shōgun's residence, the Flower Palace. Hosokawa Katsumoto took advantage of Shōkoku Temple's position to keep the current shōgun and the Emperor safe.
Ōuchi Masahiro's reinforcements for the Western Army overwhelmed Hosokawa Katsumoto's Eastern Army, limiting their presence in Kyōto to a much smaller area than before. The atmosphere in the heart of the city was tense.
Dororo knew the area well, but he could find no way past the tight defenses of the Eastern Army. Hyakkimaru had no choice but to wait for a way through to present itself. A small, common skirmish between samurai lords had escalated into a full-scale war.
There was a long line of ashigaru mercenaries in Hyakkimaru's sight line as he and Dororo approached Shōkoku Temple. Hyakkimaru had an instinctive hatred of ashigaru from listening to Jukai's stories of being hunted by them.
"We don't look like warriors," Hyakkimaru said. "Maybe they'll overlook us."
"No way," Dororo muttered. "They kill anyone who carries a sword at their hip."
Hyakkimaru grimaced down at his sword. He had nothing to do with the Eastern and Western Armies and wanted no part in their conflict, but his sword would make him a target. He had no idea what these armies wanted or how to negotiate with them. He'd seen the fierce fighting and the casualties; he suspected that these men couldn't be reasoned with at all. It seemed likely that he wouldn't be able to reach the magistrate's office for quite some time; it was too heavily guarded.
Still, he'd come all this way to make contact with Mutō Yasuchika. He couldn't just give up.
"You could always try to cut your way through," Dororo said sarcastically. He thought that Hyakkimaru was weak, probably because he'd met him while he was fleeing from ashigaru.
"We can't linger here," Dororo said. "It's too dangerous. Let's go find some dinner." He ran off. Hyakkimaru hesitated for a moment, then followed.
Dororo and Hyakkimaru snaked behind the line of ashigaru, going through a burned gate. Many noble estates had been burned in a battle on the 14th of June, but some Kyōgoku Clan estates had survived unscathed. Most of these had been abandoned by their owners when the fighting had intensified.
A skylark chirped where it sat on a wall at sunset. Dororo entered an estate stealthily and came out with food and some small trinkets he'd picked up. Hyakkimaru followed Dororo because he lacked other options. Stealing went against Buddhist principles, but it also wasn't right for a child to starve, to say nothing of himself.
Just as Dororo was leaving the estate he'd robbed, he and Hyakkimaru heard a high-pitched scream coming from inside. A man's voice called out roughly in a guttural tone.
"Looks like someone's here," Dororo whispered. "We need to head back."
"Who's in there?" Hyakkimaru asked.
"The bad guys," Dororo said. "They're busy now, so let's go."
Hyakkimaru was torn. The screamer sounded like a young woman. He turned on his heel and headed back toward the estate.
Dororo tugged at the sleeve of his kosode. "Hey!" he hissed. "If they find out we stole, they'll kill us."
Hyakkimaru didn't seem to hear Dororo. He hurried back toward the estate.
"Is this a Mount Kurama thing?" Dororo muttered.
Hyakkimaru slipped through the estate doors, careful not to make any noise. The corpses of two beautiful women were strewn across the doorstep. Their throats were slit. Blood stained their clothes.
Hyakkimaru heard voices coming from one of the interior rooms. He entered one and found two armed men carrying longswords. Their armor didn't fit well at all. Hyakkimaru could see their underwear peeking out from the top of their hakama and leg armor. Another man, fat and bearded, straddled a young woman on the floor.
Hyakkimaru was at a loss for words. The woman was dressed finely, like the princess he'd met on Mount Kurama had been. Her kimono was lifted all the way up to expose her legs, which were trembling violently from fear.
This woman was about the same age as the princess he'd met. He couldn't help but see her as that same girl...
"What the fuck do you want?" the fat man asked.
The men in the room had finally noticed him. The two armed men laughed. Without taking so much as a step, Hyakkimaru yanked one of the armed men forward and kicked him in the chest.
As the man stumbled backward, Hyakkimaru pulled the fat man off of the woman. He gripped the man by both shoulders and slammed him into the wall.
Dororo was concealed behind the room's sliding screen. His eyes went wide as he watched Hyakkimaru fight.
The young woman rolled away from the fighting and fled the room. One of the men started chasing after her, shouting, "Hey, not fair! We haven't all had our turn yet!"
"Filthy beasts," Dororo muttered. He despised those who abused the weak and helpless, especially those who took people and made them do what they pleased. He was a thief, but he had his standards.
The man chasing the woman didn't get very far. Hyakkimaru slashed his spine with the Muramasa sword before he took a single step out of the room.
The next man faced Hyakkimaru head-on, but Hyakkimaru struck faster than the man could see; he collapsed to the floor with his face cut in half and a cracked skull.
"Get him!" Dororo shouted.
The fat man turned toward Hyakkimaru, shaking from head to toe. He made no attempt to retrieve his fallen sword: he simply fled, not after the woman, but toward the front doors of the estate.
"And stay gone," Hyakkimaru muttered.
The estate was dark and quiet. Hyakkimaru and Dororo found no signs of the woman. Hyakkimaru hoped that she'd managed to get to safety. He hadn't felt any fear during the fight, but now that it was over, he was shaking. He'd killed a man before, but he felt like this time was different. Last time, he'd killed to protect himself. This time, he'd killed to protect another.
This was also the first time he'd ever killed in a blind rage. He felt like the sword itself was possessed somehow; it had moved and cut without his conscious will directing its strikes.
The sword isn't alive. It can't possibly have a will of its own...can it?
Dororo praised the sword as they walked back to the basement of the burned-out temple. "It's like it moved without you telling it to. It's amazing."
Hyakkimaru remembered the history of the sword. Muramasa had made it for In Senju, a general who had been captured in China. He'd lost his wife and daughter while trying to escape. The sword had been made explicitly to take revenge against the people responsible for killing his family.
Hyakkimaru had drawn the sword without thinking when the soldiers had come to Mount Kurama to force his father to treat their army's wounds. The sword seemed to understand what he felt, and react to it. It had never made him do something that he wouldn't have chosen himself...at least, not yet. He didn't fully understand his connection to the sword—or the sword's connection to his emotions.
Hyakkimaru used psychokinesis to move. Rage had caused him to damage his own leg when facing the Nue, since he hadn't been in control of his feelings then. Was the sword acting as a conduit for his rage, and by extension, his psychokinesis? The more he thought about it, the more terrifying the sword became. It contained the full force of the psychokinetic energy he'd cultivated along with the anger he'd nursed in his heart since learning that his parents had cast him away.
I didn't kill those men. The sword did it. It's full of In Senju's rage, as well as mine.
The thought was not encouraging.
That August, the Ōuchi Clan forces burst into Kyōto, and the war began in earnest. Emperor Go-Hanazono and the Imperial Court fled west of the Flower Palace to the city of Muromachi, which had been built by Emperor Tsuchimikado some three hundred years before. The Emperor maintained his policy of strict neutrality toward the conflict.
The Ōuchi Clan army served as powerful reinforcements for Yamana Sōzen. By September 1, they had pushed back the Hosokawa Clan's defenses and turned the Kyōgoku Clan line of defense into a sheet of fire and arrows. Shōkoku Temple's main gate was defended by the Fushinomiya, Uyama, Shijō, Ayanokōji, and several other clans; they lost thirty-seven estates to fire when the Ōuchi Clan reinforcements attacked. The Hosokawa and Yoshinaga Clans, which were larger, lost an additional eighty estates. Nothing remained of the estates but ash.
The number of places for the Imperial Court to flee to was shrinking. People hid in the smaller homes and estates of their neighbors, but even those weren't safe from the fires of war for very long.
Dororo often went outside on his own for food and supplies. When he returned to the basement of the burned-out temple, he described the hellscape outside to Hyakkimaru in painstaking detail. He also learned that the estate of the shōgun's magistrate, Iio Koretane, had burned down just like so many others.
There was no longer any need for Dororo to lead Hyakkimaru to the magistrate's office. Bodies littered the street like stones. Mutō Yasuchika was almost certainly dead and the shōgun's magistrate was nowhere to be found.
Dororo and Hyakkimaru stayed hidden in the temple's basement, waiting for the battles to stop and the fires to be put out. The lower city was full of dead bodies and casualties, but it was safer in the south, at least comparatively, so Dororo stole food and sold his black market goods there and stayed off the battlefield. The armies of Kyōgoku Mochikyo and Takeda Nobutada holed up inside the Karasumadono Palace and the Takakura Clan estate and engaged the Western Army in heavy fighting.
On October 3, the militant monks of the Western Army set fire to Shōkoku Temple. The Kyōgoku Clan and Takeda Clan fell to their enemies and retreated toward the province of Izumo. Ise Sadachika, whose army was protecting the eastern gate of the Shōkoku Temple, was also forced to flee. The Western Army hoped to occupy the Shōkoku Temple, but it burned down completely.
Ōuchi Masahiro, who was serving under Toki Shigeyori,1 occupied the grounds of the former Shōkoku Temple and collected the bodies of their dead in eight enormous rolling carts. There were untold thousands of dead.
The season grew colder. Drizzling rain fell at night. Dororo started sneaking closer and closer to the Shōkoku Temple area where the dead were buried. It was getting more and more dangerous to steal things from around the city. He drew close to the deep trenches where the corpses of the Western Army lay in heaps, looted one, then withdrew quickly.
Something dropped from above him: the corpse of someone from the Eastern Army. There were several Eastern Army corpses mixed in among the dead. Dororo was startled and gasped, "Bastard."
There were probably a few men still alive in the trench—barely, anyway. Dororo sneaked past the patrolling wagons of dead and the guards keeping watch over the Shōkoku Temple grounds without making a sound. The battle would break out again before long.
***
Hyakkimaru decided to go to Fushimi at the beginning of December. The magistrate's office was completely burned; there was nothing left, so he couldn't learn anything more here. He asked Dororo to teach him the way to Fushimi.
"It's not safe there, either," Dororo said. "The Western Army's occupying it, and there's been fighting there. The roads aren't safe."
Dororo was right. There had been several battles near Fushimi in recent days.
"Never mind that," Hyakkimaru said. "Which way is it?"
"Why do you want to know?"
"There's something there that I want to see."
"Fine. Then I'll go with you."
"No," Hyakkimaru said. "You can't."
He had no desire to lead Dororo to the Hall of Hell. It had burned down eighteen years ago. He wanted to see it and find answers. Explaining it all to Dororo would be too complicated. If he was going to go to Fushimi, he was going to go alone.
"Hmph." Dororo puffed out his cheeks in irritation.
The next morning, Hyakkimaru left the safety of the temple basement at noon. The roads were heavily guarded, so Hyakkimaru avoided them as he traveled. Signs of winter were appearing all around the capital; it was bitterly cold. The Rashōmon Gate was in ruins. The area around it was populated by beggars and wanderers. He tossed a few coins at a beggar's feet and hurried on.
Night came early in winter. At dusk on Hyakkimaru's first day of travel, someone called out to him: "Stop!"
Hyakkimaru stopped and turned. Two samurai wearing armor walked briskly toward him. They looked like they were from the Western Army. Hyakkimaru had a sword at his hip and looked like a samurai himself, so the Western Army must have mistaken him for one of their own. He regretted going through the Rashōmon Gate, but he couldn't turn back now.
Hyakkimaru could run, but he'd be chased. He could also stand and fight, but that would likely be more trouble than it was worth. He decided to pretend to be an ignorant man from the countryside.
"Excuse me," Hyakkimaru said. "I'm going to visit my relatives in Otokuni. I'm from Mino and lost my way in the dark."
Hyakkimaru knew little of the geography around the capital, so he used details of Jukai's journey to Mino in his cover story.
"Hm," one of the men said. "Well, to the guardhouse with you, then."
These two weren't treating him as an enemy, but there were a lot more men at the guardhouse. Hyakkimaru didn't want to waste any time here, but trying to break free would only cause a mess, so he followed the two samurai without complaint.
There were far more men gathered at the guardhouse than Hyakkimaru expected. Dororo had warned him that the roads were heavily guarded and that the way to Fushimi wasn't safe. Hyakkimaru probably should have listened to him.
Hyakkimaru was searched. Some other samurai questioned him, but he gave them the same answers as before. His cover story held and he was taken to the commander of the guardhouse. Fortunately, no one seemed to realize that his limbs weren't real.
"Enlist in the Western Army," the commander of the guardhouse said. "You have a good build; if you distinguish yourself, you'll be promoted quickly."
"I promised my family I'd return in a hurry," Hyakkimaru said. "I can't possibly enlist right now."
The commander passed him a wooden tag with letters burned into it. "Show this to the regiment captain," the guardhouse commander said. "If you can get permission from him, you can go home to your family."
The Western Army had lost many men and supplies in battles and raids. They wanted every soldier they could get. Hyakkimaru wasn't going to be allowed to move on without talking to the regiment captain.
Hyakkimaru bowed his head politely as he'd been taught. He left in a hurry, struggling to conceal his impatience at this delay. He wanted to crush the wooden tag into the dirt beneath his heel, but he thought better of it and placed the tag into his breast pocket. He slipped away from the guardhouse without being seen, then continued on his way.
By the time Hyakkimaru reached Fushimi, it was full night. A half-moon had risen, bright and high, in the sky. The pagodas of the Myōshō Temple looked black in the moonlight. He stepped onto temple grounds and felt soft ash beneath his feet.
The ruins of the Unryū Temple Complex were just ahead of him. It had been long years since the main temple and the Hall of Hell had burned down, so the area surrounding it was overgrown with underbrush and trees. Withered winter grass blew in the breeze. Autumn leaves fell and piled up on the ground. Moss grew thickly on the trees.
Hyakkimaru had heard about this place from Jukai, who had seen it in the afternoon. It felt much more dreary and creepy at night. Long, autumn brown willow branches whispered over the ground where the Hall of Hell had once stood. It wasn't the rainy season now, but the branches' exaggerated growth made Hyakkimaru think of willow trees in rain.
Hyakkimaru tried to imagine what the Hall of Hell had looked like. The image his mind supplied was of Kurama Temple, with its high sloped and gabled roof and Buddhist guardian statues. His imagined image suddenly changed to a temple with a flatter, more polygonal roof. The eight points of Kurama Temple's dark-tiled roof rose into sharp and wicked-looking points.
Hyakkimaru blinked and imagined Kurama Temple again, but the shape of the roof changed the moment that he recalled the image to his mind.
"What the hell?" he muttered.
He'd done nothing to alter his own thoughts, which meant that something else must be influencing them. Fog rose up from the ground and into the sky, obscuring the moon. Hyakkimaru looked around, then took a step back. The ash beneath his feet glowed red, illuminating the fog.
The temple that Hyakkimaru had imagined appeared in front of him, sharp-pronged roof and all. The placard over the wide double doors of the temple read in crisp, clear lettering: Hall of Hell.
The doors of the temple were barred shut. The willow trees around the temple were no longer withered from autumn cold, but fresh and green as if it was the beginning of spring.
Hyakkimaru remembered what Jukai had told him about Kazunen, who had been a boy when the Hall of Hell burned down. He was seeing the Hall of Hell as it used to be—before his body had been stolen by the demons. Rage made his hands shake. His blood boiled in his veins as he looked up at the restored temple.
"Demons," he yelled, "come out!"
The bar over the doors splintered and fell. The double doors of the temple blew open wide.
Jukai had told Hyakkimaru a story about how the earth remembered human history long after people forgot, but Hyakkimaru was too blindly focused on hatred and anger to remember it.
"Where are the people who threw me out?" he asked through gritted teeth.
Strange laughter echoed from the ground. Hyakkimaru recognized it from his nightmares—and from when the demons had attacked him on Mount Kurama.
"Show yourselves!"
Hyakkimaru's vision went white as he shouted at the demons' voices. Sharp pain shot through his head. He stumbled and almost fell. He felt like he was eroding at the edges: disappearing into the past where the Hall of Hell was still standing.
"Uh..." Hyakkimaru grunted, then regained his focus. The sensation of disappearing left him, but an unsettling sense of discomfort remained. He saw himself from the outside, like his soul had left his body and was watching over him from above.
***
Four candles lit in a vast hall flickered in the evening wind. The light of the candles didn't reach the hall's tall ceiling. The surrounding darkness closed in on the candles as if it wanted to swallow the light.
Forty-eight statues of demons stood inside the hall, feet planted with eyes like angry red embers. Some figures gnashed their teeth; others reached their clawed hands to the heavens in an attitude of reverence or prayer. The statues had the look of devils or rakshasa, man-eating monsters.
The candlelight danced over the faces of the statues and cast their shadows on the walls of the hall.
The scene was identical to what Hyakkimaru had seen in his nightmares. A lone samurai stood in front of a raised dais directly facing several of the demon statues.
Hyakkimaru couldn't see anything of the samurai except for his back. He wore a black-lacquered pleated hat in the style of those worn by nobles of the Imperial Court. His hakama were long and full and there was a longsword at his hip. His hands were pressed firmly together.
"Forty-eight devils, hear my prayer," the samurai said. "I have ambitions to take the world in my hands and bend it to my will."
Voices murmured underfoot.
The samurai rose and approached the dais, then knelt down and continued to pray.
"If you grant this prayer, I will give you anything."
"Anything?" The voice of a demon echoed in the hall.
"Anything. I swear it. What do you wish of me? Treasure? Money?"
"We have no use for such trivial things," the voice boomed. The four pillars supporting the hall shook.
"Then what do you want?" the samurai asked.
"A life."
"A life?" the samurai asked. "Mine?"
"Your wife will soon give birth to a child. We desire forty-eight pieces of that child's body."
"You want forty-eight pieces of a newborn's body?" the samurai asked, clearly confused.
"That is the only thing we want. We will accept nothing else."
The samurai shook from head to toe. All four candles in the hall flickered out, even though there was no wind.
"All right," the samurai said. "If I am granted the world, I will give that to you."
"Are you lying, Kagemitsu?"
The samurai pressed his face to the floor. "I'm not lying. You have my word."
A thick mist emerged from behind the demon statues before the samurai finished speaking. The mist solidified into a woman's shape, then flew through the air toward the samurai. She wore an elegant kimono patterned with red and yellow flowers.
"Use care in making deals with demons, Kagemitsu," the woman said in a scolding tone. "If you go back on your word, we will destroy you utterly."
"I'll make any promise you devils want if it means I can conquer the world," the samurai said. "And I'll never break it."
The woman laughed. The other demons joined in, shaking the walls and floor of the hall with the force of their laughter.
***
The Hall of Hell vanished as Hyakkimaru returned to his senses. There was no sign of the samurai or the demon statues anywhere. The ruins of the burned temple and the red light shining through the fog rising from the ground remained, as did the woman who had formed from the mist inside the Hall of Hell. She stood in the shadow of a willow tree and laughed.
Hyakkimaru broke into a cold sweat. He planted his feet and stood his ground. He didn't know if what he'd just seen was a hallucination or some kind of enchantment caused by the woman.
"Do you know my mother?" he asked.
"I certainly look like her, don't I?" She flashed him a smile. "Do you like the kimono? Does it bring back memories, Hyakkimaru?" She laughed again.
Hyakkimaru had no reason to believe that this woman was telling the truth, but some part of him had always missed his mother—it was only natural. He was her child and he had never seen her face.
This demon wasn't the first to masquerade as his mother. His anger intensified at the idea of being tricked. "Was any of what I just saw real?" he asked.
"It was the truth of your own past. I showed you because I was there, and felt sorry for you." Hyakkimaru had watched the samurai sell him to the demon statues for the sake of advancing his own power. "You poor child..."
The laughter of the demons welled up from the ground and echoed all around Hyakkimaru.
"Don't think that you can ever get your body back." More laughter.
Hyakkimaru gripped his Muramasa sword and screamed. "I won't give up!"
The demon woman parted the long, hanging willow leaves. The hem of her kimono dipped into a wastewater container used in tea ceremonies as she rose upward. Pale blue fire sprang from her feet. The willow tree caught fire, branches snapping and crackling in the flames.
The demon woman's entire body was engulfed in blue fire. Her dark shadow swayed, suspended in the flames. Her face shifted; the corners of her eyes tilted up like a fox's. Three horns burst through the skin of her forehead. Her mouth stretched from ear to ear. Hyakkimaru saw fangs like a snake's. Long, sharp claws grew from her hands.
Hyakkimaru was so stunned by this transformation that he retreated a few steps without realizing it. "Is the mother who threw me away actually like this? Does she have a demon's heart?" He felt like he was going to be sick.
"Poor child. Didn't you know? All people have the hearts of demons. If you continue to oppose us, you'll wind up just like you were when you were born."
Hyakkimaru pointed his sword at her and glared. "That samurai's name was Kagemitsu, wasn't it?"
The woman's high-pitched laugh was almost a giggle. "Oh? And what do you intend to do with that information?"
"I can't do much with it," Hyakkimaru said. "Tell me his clan name."
"You really want to know that, don't you?"
Hyakkimaru gathered his courage and advanced on the demon woman.
"At least tell me my mother's name."
"I can't tell you that, or your father's clan name either. Poor child, your parents never loved you." She laughed again. The sound lingered in the air like an echo of madness.
Hyakkimaru stood there with his Muramasa sword at the ready, rooted to the spot.
***
Dororo watched the scene from the cover of a bamboo grove. Hyakkimaru had flatly refused to tell Dororo what he intended to do in Fushimi. Dororo's curiosity was piqued, so he'd followed Hyakkimaru at a distance. He understood not wanting to stay put inside the temple basement. Everyone got tired of being cooped up eventually.
He had not expected to see Hyakkimaru fighting a demon.
Dororo started to regret his curiosity as he watched the fight unfold. He was frozen still and couldn't move. He wanted to cry out—for help, maybe—but no sound came from his mouth.
If the demon woman was afraid of Hyakkimaru's sword, she showed no sign of it.
Hyakkimaru himself was only standing because of his sustaining rage. His thoughts were a roiling mess. The only thing that kept his limbs moving and functional were disciplined habits that he'd formed while cultivating psychokinesis. He was exhausted to his bones, but desperation kept him upright. He couldn't leave this place without learning his birth father's name.
The demon woman approached him from the side. Her eyes glowed red like hot coals. Red light escaped from her eyes in two beams that converged on Hyakkimaru's left arm. Sparks shot from the prosthetic limb as it dropped to the ground.
Hyakkimaru had been holding the Muramasa sword with his left hand. He quickly bent and retrieved it with his right. He slashed at the demon woman without hesitation, but she disappeared before the sword could touch her.
"Come out!" Hyakkimaru shouted hoarsely.
The demon woman appeared in the sky above him, wreathed in blue fire. Her eyes were fixed on his right leg. They glowed red again, preparing for their next attack.
Hyakkimaru tried to dodge, but the demon woman's eyes followed him. His leg prosthetic slipped off, but Hyakkimaru kept his balance on one leg.
The demon woman wasted no time: she aimed her next attack at Hyakkimaru's left leg. Hyakkimaru stumbled to the dirt; the Muramasa sword left his hand and went skittering away.
Dororo watched the battle from the cover of the bamboo grove and didn't make a sound.
Hyakkimaru landed face-up on the ground. Tears overflowed in his eyes. The demons really did intend to return him to the same shape he'd had at birth. His legs and one arm were gone, detached by demon magic. His remaining arm was almost certainly her next target. He couldn't deflect or evade her attacks; it was hopeless.
But Hyakkimaru was accustomed to hopelessness. He'd believed that he would never see, or move his hands, or walk. Jukai's long and patient teaching over the years saved him from despair now.
This isn't like when I was born, he thought. Not at all. I still have my right arm—and psychokinesis.
He remembered sitting with Jukai in a meditation pose, encouraging his own psychokinetic potential. He used his right arm to push himself up a little and roll toward his sword. He picked it up and said, "Let In Senju's wrath make you strong."
Hyakkimaru threw the sword at the demon woman as hard as he could. At the same time, he began a prayer to the god of Iwakura Shrine.
The moment the sword left his hand, the demon woman cut through his right arm with her eye attack.
The Muramasa sword flew as straight as an arrow toward its target, but it fell harmlessly to the ground when it reached the demon woman.
"Tell Jukai to stop playing games," the demon woman said, "or we'll come for him next." She laughed once more, then disappeared.
Hyakkimaru lay on the ground, limbless, just as he'd been on the day of his birth. The red light emanating from the ground where the Hall of Hell had stood faded away. The mist rose and dissipated. Faint moonlight cut across Hyakkimaru's face. The willow tree had burned to a husk. All was quiet and still.
Dororo stood in the bamboo grove, stunned. Hyakkimaru wasn't moving. Tears streamed down Dororo's face. He never expected to witness Hyakkimaru being cruelly tortured by a demon.
"Aniki!"2 Dororo cried out through his tears.
"Do...ro...ro?"
Dororo gasped. Dead people couldn't talk. He retreated fearfully.
"Dororo," Hyakkimaru said, more clearly this time. "Come here."
"Uh...yes. I'm coming."
Dororo knew that Hyakkimaru was alive, but he still approached him with hesitant steps. His limbs were scattered all around him, but there was no blood.
Hyakkimaru opened his eyes. He was obviously in pain, but he smiled slightly when he saw Dororo.
"Does it hurt?" Dororo asked. He saw clearly now that Hyakkimaru's limbs were fake and not real limbs, which explained the lack of blood, but Dororo still couldn't calm down. The demon woman had been frightening enough; seeing Hyakkimaru transform into a limbless monster was horrifying. Dororo was mute with terror.
"Calm down, Dororo. You're a boy, aren't you? Be brave."
Dororo looked at him as if he'd been shot by an arrow. "Um...yes..." He was completely flustered.
"Help me get somewhere where people can't see me," Hyakkimaru said.
"All right. I will."
Dororo took a deep breath and helped support Hyakkimaru's torso from behind. He picked him up and started moving.
Translator's Notes:"
1 Toki Shigeyori (1442 – May 5, 1497) was a leading
military commander during the Muromachi Period in Mino Province
(modern-day Gifu Prefecture). In 1467, Shigeyori fought for the western
armies in the Ōnin War. He commanded a group of 8,000 men and fought with
the forces stationed in Kyōto.↩
2 Aniki: This is Dororo's usual way of addressing
Hyakkimaru. The term means "older brother," which may be a reference to
the consecrated water that Dororo and Hyakkimaru drank when they first
met. Dororo does not use oniisan, the more usual Japanese term for "older
brother" that is typically used to politely address any younger man,
related or not. The tone of aniki is stronger than that of oniisan and
implies a stronger relationship.↩
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